THE STORYTELLER

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 6, 11 February 1925, Page 3

THE STORYTELLER

NORA

CHAPTER XV.—(Continued

Nora hardly heard what Landolfo said, nor saw what he did. She mechanically obeyed him, whilst, the one dreadful thought kept gnawing at her heart : Had she forced her father to this awful determination? Had she repelled him so harshly that he had been led to think this the only way of escaping from ruin and from shame? Her refusal to comply with his wish now seemed a monstrous act of cruelty to her. “It has all happened through my fault,” she repeated with tremulous lips. “Father, father, don’t die! In the name of pity, don’t die! I will do anything and everything for your sake! Father, I solemnly swear to do as you wish.” she whispered to the unconscious man. in a persuasive tone, as if she thought he must hear her, and be called back to life again. V as it only the change of position, or was it the voice of his child and her warm breath, which caused a- slight shiver to pass through his body and a gentle sigh to break through his tightly-closed lips? Nora clasped her hands together in a pi aver of thanksgiving and of entreaty. “Don’t let him die! Oh. my Saviour, don’t let him die through my fault! The sacrifice of my whole life shall expiate this moment, cost what it may!” And as she then spoke, she pressed a little cross which she wore round her neck upon his blanched bps. I will think nothing too much in order to save you, father." And, indeed, it seemed to her as if the sacrifice of her own life was the only price with which she could buy her father’s. Landolfo now returned, accompanied by two or three men with a litter. To Mrs. Karsten he had only said that her husband had sprained his ankle, in the wood, and that he, therefore, required help in order to carry him home. To the men, the broken remnants of the bridge rendered no other explanation necessary. The director was carefully placed upon the litter, and Nora did not let go of his hand. As soon as the slightest movement was perceptible upon his face, she whispered her consent to his wish softly in his ear, as if she feared that his soul might depart before learning that she had accomplished her duty to him as a daughter. It seemed to her as if a light suddenly shot from his eyes, and as if he had understood her meaning, and once even, she thought, "that he had pressed her hand ever so slightly. The hours which followed were full of anguish to her, and yet Mrs. Karsten was rendered so completely powerless by agitation that Nora was forced -to work herself up to tho highest pitch of energy and of self-possession. It was appalling to see how calmly she undertook everything, not neglect-

Translated from the German by Princess Liechtenstein (Published by arrangement with Burns, Oates, Washbourne, Ltd.)

iug the most apparently insignificant directions of the doctor. The latter declared that the director had suffered from a slight attack of apoplexy, and that his state had been made worse by the time he had spent in tho water. During a few days he hovered between life and death. Nora never left his side, neither by day nor by night; she did not speak, she did not complain, she did not weep; she accomplished even the slightest of hoi duties as nursebut for everything else she seemed turned to stone. W hen the consciousness of the sick man had returned, he did not in any way allude lo tho past, nor did a word about his accident cross his lips. He seemed agitated and pained as his senses gradually came back to him, and his eyes sought Nora’s with a look partly shy, partly anxious. But Nora would not be heroic by halves, so that she sought at once to give the tired brain immediate rest and satisfaction. Kneeling at his bedside and embracing him tenderly, she whispered to him the promise which she had made m the first hour of her despair, and which, since then, she had often repeated inwardly to herself. It was strange to mark the effect of these words upon the convalescent man. At first he looked sceptically, then wonderingly at lei, and at last a childlike joy passed across us wan features. He pressed his daughter’s hand to his shoulder and said, “Then I have not only dreamt this; it was not a mere phantom who came to tell me that you would save me. . . Nora, Nora; I knew that you would be my own good child, that you would not forsake me in my distress. . . And now your old father need not give up his beautiful horses— pride, his fame, without which ho cannot live. f ° Nova! that will be pleasant! You will put the other one completely aside; we will be all m all to each other as in the good old times when you were a little girl and enjoyed nothing more than being placed upon a horse by your father. Do you remember that still Nora? . . . And then they came ami tried to separate my little girl from nie; but you are like your mother, and will leave everything for me.” “Everything!” gasped Nora, and there must have lain a deep anguish in the word, for it seemed to awake the sick man out of bis joyful trance. “You would never have been happy with him, my girl,” he went on, smoothing her ■soft hair compassionately. “You would have been indescribably miserable. I know the world; they would have always hated you for having, as it were, forced yourself upon them, and he would at last have repented of his choice and have neglected you. And that, you know, would have been a thousand times

more bitter and hard to bear than this moment. Believe me, my child, it is for your good, and I am only saving you from great unhappiness.” And as the director sank back exhausted upon his pillows, he was quite convinced of the truth of what he said. There is no orator more eloquent and more persuasive to a man than the voice of his own selfishness. Nora laid her tired head by the side of that of her father, whilst he held her fingers tightly grasped, as if he feared she might escape im. “Everything!” she again whispered to herself, and the whole magnitude of the sacrifice arose before her. Her love killed at a blow, her position destroyed, her happiness a myth, and her Slopes blasted. All this .fell upon her heart heavily, so heavily that she felt ready to cry aloud under the weight of the burden. Had her father in his half somnolence the remotest idea of what his child was .suitering? “She won’t do it, she won't do it, Landolfo.” . . . he said, in a broken tone. “Yes, she will do it,” repeated Nora firmly. Then, however, she arose, and gently disengaging her hand from his, she called the nurse, and for the first time since many days and nights she went to her room. It seemed to her' as if she wen l some other person, very different from her former self, and everything around her seemed strange' and new. Upon her writing-desk lay the letter to Curt she had only had time to begin. The words stared at her, like ghosts, in an uncanny sort of way, and reminded her of what she had intended to write to him. And now it was all past, and she must write something else, something quite different. She hastily tore the paper in two. Something must he doin' and done at once, and although her eyes were, burning from her late vigils, and her heavy eyelids were nearly closed with fatigue, she sat down and wrote — as in a dream. What did she write? Later on, she hardly knew herself ; hut it was a clear and graphic description of all the hours, of all the days which had passed since that dreadful mo.ment in which her father had first asked her, as a matter of course, (o give up her happiness to him. It struck her at the time that she was writing for some one else. Surely the suffering was too great for her to understand, and it was only at the end of her letter that she was overcome by the realisation of her dreadful woe. It sounded forth in her last words of farewell, for they brought home to her the depth and darkness of the abyss which henceforth separated her from him. It did not cross her mind for a second to consider their engagement otherwise than broken off for ever. “As one dying, do I part from you, Curt! As one dying, and who is not even sure of salvation. Curt, I durst not take the hand which you, perhaps, will hold out to me. Oh ! had you been here, yon might have found a way to save me from misery! Thus, alone, I only saw one thing before me, and that was to do my duty at every cost. May the sacrifice which I now make' expiate any error I may have committed in making it.

I could not act otherwise. Farewell, Curt!" The pen fell out of her hand and her head

sank upon the table, as if she were incapable of thought or action; hut yet her mind was at work, nor could it rest even for a moment after so fearful a storm. Was she, perhaps, regretting that she was no longer the little child who had sobbed out her first grief in the arms of that bright and bonnie lad? Did she see her pale and agonising mother before her as that lad had carried the child to her bedside? Did she still feel the feverish hand which had pushed her away from that lad into her father’s arms? “Mother! mother! did you wish that it should he so?” she cried out aloud, and a torrent of tears fell from her eyes. “Am I to belong completely to my father? Well, then, if you wished it, it has been done; I have signed myself away to him with my very heart blood. Now, come, and bless your child!” There was a drop of comfort, something like a whispered blessing which came upon her at that moment; it was the drop of comfort, it was the blessing which comes to every sacrifice, to every pure and complete act of good-will. Nora lay there still, until the grey morn-ing-dawn broke into her room, when she was summoned to her father. Before her lay her finished letter. Whither should she direct it? She could think of nothing, nor remember anything very exactly. At Curt’s last visit they had determined not to break through orders any more, and to wait patiently until the two years of trial should have elapsed. He bad, therefore, not told her his address, and she could not hear to think of her letter coming into strange hands. “I will send it to his mother’s care, and she may forward it on —she may see it if she likes. It will give her pleasure, for it is the only letter she would like him to receive from nit',” she added bitterly. CHAPTER XVI. Landolfo had attained bis object sooner than he had hoped. That he had represented matters in a worse light than that in which they stood was bis own secret. His consequent emotion upon seeing how tragically his little comedy might have ended was, therefore, anything hut put on. But his conscience was not delicate enough to torment him long with remorse, especially when he saw that everything had happened according to his wishes. It was his sincere conviction that Nora’s appearance in public was the only thing which could save the director from ruin; and, last not least, be favorable to his own projects. “After a, few years, our haughty beauty will have got accustomed to me, and will no longer treat me as a dog,” he thought to himself, and already he rubbed his hands, mentally, at the brilliant position he would occupy as Director Karsten’s son-in-law and manager of the whole troop. His principal occupation now was to draw as much advantage as possible out of the present state of affairs, and he set everything in motion not only with a view to render it impossible

for Nora to change her mind, hut also that the public might be worked up into a proper state of interest and curiosity. He was well acquainted with the maimer of pulling the secret strings, and of directing the petty intrigues necessary to prepare the road for such an artist.

Nora was still at her father's bedside when paragraphs appeared about her in the most popular papers; the penny-a-liners made themselves very busy with her name. One day it was her beauty and her education, another her love story which was retailed with the most manifold variations, now and then, indeed, coming so near the truth, that one might almost have filled up the apparently discreet blanks with well-known names; but sometimes so improbable that people believed what was said on that very account. The pecuniary difficulties of the director wore also alluded to, and Nora was presented to the public under the various and attractive forms of a forsaken and broken-hearted beauty, of a heroic daughter, and of a passionate votary to horsemanship.

All the paragraphs wore read, discussed, and believed in. Karsfen was a European celebrity, and it was thought interesting to catch glimpses of his private life. Of course, the darker and the more astounding the story, the more favor did it meet with. It must be admitted that a third part of those who read the papers skip the account of political events in order to devour items of gossip, and when they sniff scandal they rejoice, and read the paragraph over two or three times. Besides, just then the world was in a state of political torpor, such as it now and then falls into, and gossip was more welcome than usual; everybody was anxious .to see tin l renowned beauty, of whom every paper wrote, each one, ignoring the while that those various versions all emanated from the same pen and the same fertile brain.

In order to be on the safe side, Landolfo cut out these paragraphs and sent them, to Countess Degenthal. The latter had long ago received Nora's letter to her son, and had felt indignant that her commands should be violated in so flagrant a manner; but she bad not thought it her duty to forward the letter on to Curt. After receiving Landolfo's packet, she concluded that the'letter hsrl to do with this new aspect of affairs, though she hardly know whether to be pleased or indignant, at the fact that a person, whom her son had deigned to love should be thus brought before the public. Of course, she did not think for a moment that Nora hod any excuse for having acted, thus, and even an irrefutable proof that the whole was an invention would not have altered the case in. her eyes. A name which had thus been dragged into the mud could no longer be spoken in the same breath as that of her son. She now thought it quite justifiable to retain the letter until she had made sure

of the truth of the report. . . She had not to wait long.

Days went by; the director recovered more rapidly than might have been expected, and was now possessed with the one idea of bringing out his daughter upon the scene

of liis own former triumphs. He had placed all his hopes in this, and calmed all his anxieties with the thought.

.. Nora was to appear as soon as possible and in the most brilliant manner imaginable, for ho wished to be master of the position before his rival had reached the capital. Thus it was that hardly three weeks had passed after the director's accident, when huge playbills were pasted about on all the walls of the capital of North Germany, upon win -h were printed in large letters that the celebrated beauty, .Miss Nora Karsten, would soon make her appearance in her father's renowned circus. Then followed the various wonders which, according to the programme, were to astonish the public.

Even the countess, prepared as she was, turned pale on reading one of these bills which Landolfo, of course, sent her. Something like compassion for the poor girl made its way through her rigid common sense to her heart. She remembered those pure and noble features, expressive of distinction and of higher education, and so completely devoid of frivolity. She wondered what could have 'brought her to tiling so contrary to her nature. But, however it might have taken place, the deed was done, and with it a great load was taken oft' the countess's mind. She was now armed with unanswerable proofs, and could not be accused by her sou of having given heed to vain reports. She was too honest to destroy Nora's letter, but she did not send it alone; she packed it with the paragraphs in the .folds of the lave play-bill.

"My poor son," she wrote. "I can no longer conceal from you that which the whole world knows. it will cause you to fa Wake from a dream which your mother's experienced eye had long ago judged an impossible and an unworthy one. Do not sorrow 100 deeply over the bare truth; it is the privilege of pure and of noble souls to believe easily, and now and then their misfortune to err in their belief. T bless Cod that it has happened soon enough not to mar the happiness of your whole life. Conic to your mother's arms, seek comfort in her heart, and you may be sure that you will receive it."

It was a matter of small importance, no doubt, that the countess should place Nora's letter so that it should be the last to catch her son's eyes. But life is made up of unimportant details, and the greatest effects are often wrought by the most insignificant causes. Did the countess make this reflection as she carefully weighed the packet before sending it to the post? Perhaps she did and perhaps she considered it part of her duty towards her son to have arranged it thus.

At the same hour in which the countess had her letter and its contents posted, Norastood in tho small dressing-room of the circus, dressed for her first appearance. Her step-mother knelt at her side with a few attendants, and gave the last touch to the jfMlvy folds of the dark riding-habit, which, Simple and well-fitting, displayed her beautiful figure to advantage. Numerous candles were 'burning by the mirror which reflected her (beauty, her severe beauty only relieved

by a golden net which imprisoned the lovely masses of her raven hair. Nora would not hear of wearing any other than the simple riding-habit she was accustomed to, nor did she even look at herself in the glass, or pay any attention to the many people who were occupied about her. She stood there as in a dream, her cold hands tightly pressed together. As in a dream she had lived through all this time, in which , days succeeded each other mechanically and enveloped, as it were, by a mist. Her father had had tact enough to spare her all the trouble of the preparations. She had resumed her daily exercises on horseback. and the fatigue she felt after them had been the only thing which had done her any good. And yet she hoped for something, reckoned with certainty upon something which never came, so that each day had brought a fresh disappointment, and that she now felt as if the last plank had given way under her. Even at this moment she stood expectantly, hoping against hope that something would come and prevent her taking the last step. Young hearts have such a capacity for hope, you know ! She had, it is true, taken a last farewell' from Curt, and had herself destroyed every chance of arresting herself on the road to her ruin— and yet, and yet! Perhaps help would come just in time to save her before it was irrevocably too late. Surely if he had dared so much for one single hour of happiness. what would he not dare now that her whole life was at stake? Every morning she had said to herself: “To-day, to-day a letter will come!” and every evening she had found some fresh excuse, some plausible reason for

the day having passed by without bringing anything from Curt. A sound of applause now fell upon her ear, and with it ended the scene which preceded her own appearance. The director entered to fetch her away. A knock was heard at the door, and a servant brought in a letter. Nora’s whole frame was seized with trembling, and the director grew pale; but at the same moment Nora let the paper fall indifferently at her feet, for upon it she had recognised the handwriting of the Superior, who had answered her by return of post, true to her old friendship and motherly interest. But, alas! what is friendship when compared with love? “It is time,” said the director almost hesitatingly. But Nora was trembling from head to foot, and seemed hardly able to move a step. The director saw his hopes dashed to the ground, and asked in a hoarse voice; “Can’t you do if? Won’t it be possible?” "Yes, it will,” said Nora, drawing herself up at the sound of his voice, which had only once before sounded in so unearthly a manner upon her ears. “Wes, my father, it will be possible,” and she followed him with a firm step. Landolfo’s exertions had, it must be owned, been crowned with success. The large arena was filled at it had hardly ever been filled before; every one had been determined ro catch the first sight of the renowned beauty. The director had prepared everything vrth the greatest possible brilliancy, so that his daughter should appear with a certain nimbus. (To bo continued.)